Boom Town (TV story)
Boom Town 'is the eleventh episode of the first series of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Joe Adhearne and featured Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler with John Barrowman as Jack Harkness. Overview To be added Synopsis The TARDIS crew takes a holiday, but the Doctor encounters an enemy he thought long since dead. A plan to build a nuclear power station in Cardiff City disguises an alien plot to rip the world apart. When the Doctor dines with monsters, he discovers traps within traps. Plot Six months after the alien infiltration of 10 Downing Street, nuclear advisor, Mr. Cleaver takes a meeting with the mayor of Cardiff, pleading that the prominent Blaidd Drwg project is stopped. The mayor, Margaret Blaine, unbeknownst to him to be the last surviving Slitheen from the Downing Street affair in disguise, tells him that the project will be ceased. When Cleaver turns away from Blaine, he fails to notice her remove her skin suit while he ponders of the dangers if the project were to be completed and yet fail. When he turns back to her, the Slitheen towers over him and murders him. Not long afterward, Mickey gets off a train at Cardiff central station. Making his way over to the Roald Dahl Plaza, he finds the TARDIS landed and hurries inside. In the control room, Rose happily welcomes Mickey while the Doctor and Jack do wiring all throughout the room. After giving Rose her passport like she'd asked, he asks why they're in Cardiff, to which they answer that the Doctor landed on top of the Cardiff rift that Gwyneth sealed in 1869 to refuel to TARDIS. With 24 hours to kill, the Doctor, Rose, Jack and Mickey go off to explore the city. In the city hall, Blaine makes a public address a mass of news reporters that the nuclear power station, the centerpiece of the Blaidd Drwg project, will prove a revolutionary advancement in employment. While her speech wins over the reporters gathered, one individual, Cathy Salt, approaches her about the rumors of all the deaths of people that opposed the construction of the plant, including Cleaver, whom Blaine had decapitated. Sensing a threat, Blaine convinces her to continue her discussion in the ladies toilets. Salt keeps talking while Blaine, concealed in a cubicle, begins to remove her skin suit again. Before she emerges for the kill, Salt starts talking about her boyfriend and upcoming child; these revelations stop Blaine dead in her tracks and, taken aback and feeling mournful, she stands down and lets Salt leave, slinking in sadness after she's gone. Elsewhere, the Doctor, Rose, Jack and Mickey have a raucous conversation in a restaurant when the Doctor spots the front page of a newspaper with Blaine's picture plastered over it under the headline "New Mayor, New Cardiff". Venturing to City Hall, the travellers split up to look for Margaret separately; the Doctor heads to her office and, as soon as she hears of his arrival, she tries to flee through the window and he gives pursuit. Calling the others, Rose and Jack manage to block her off but Mickey is late to his exit and she teleports away. However, the Doctor repeatedly recalls her with his sonic screwdriver and she relents in defeat. Blaine shows the travellers her project after explaining that she teleported away when her family was destroyed in Downing Street. Uprooting the model on the table, the Doctor reveals it to be set on a tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator, a pan-dimensional travel device that Blaine planned to use once she's sent the power station into meltdown and opened the Rift through which she'd escape. After taking in the translation of Blaine's welsh project name as "Bad Wolf", the Doctor decides to return Blaine to Raxacoricofallapatorius, but she reveals that the family Slitheen were tried for intergalactic felonies since their departure from the planet, found guilty and sentenced to execution. The Doctor insists that her punishment is not his problem. Returning to the TARDIS, the Doctor and Jack keep an eye on the captive Blaine while trying to install the extrapolator to the TARDIS engines which would half their refueling time. While Rose and Mickey leave to get a drink, the others keep working with Blaine trying to probe at the Doctor's sense of responsibility to her upcoming fate. When it fails, she pleads for a final meal as her last request; despite the Doctor's reservations, Jack presents them with a pair of bracelets which would shock Blaine with 10,000 volts of electricity if she should try to escape. With this as an amicable compromise, the Doctor agrees. Elsewhere, Rose and Mickey stroll on the boardwalk, Rose babbling about her travels. They stop and Mickey reveals that in Rose's absence, he's been seeing somebody else. Rose is taken aback by this and starts getting selfishly defensive about this relationship, but Mickey angrily reminds her that she left him behind and demands to know if he's just expected to wait for Rose for the rest of his life. Realising her fault, Rose apologises and the air is greatly soured. At the restaurant, Blaine, giving her real name as Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen makes a number of subtle attempts to kill the Doctor, such as poisoning his drink, firing a poison dart at him and exhaling the excess toxins but, having seen the eventuality, the Doctor nonchalantly counters all of them. When all else fails, Blon starts begging the Doctor not to return her home to be executed, to leave her with another cast of the Slitheen family off-world, but he just reminds her that she's pleading for mercy with the mouth of an innocent woman that she'd murdered. She tries to insist that she can be different, referring to her sparing Salt earlier that day, but the Doctor recants that this action is not new of killers and claims that it's just how they cope with slaughtering masses; the occasional act of kindness. Despite this, her pleas continue. Suddenly, a heavily rumbling echo across the city and Cardiff is suddenly rocked by an expansive quake. Alerted by the danger, the Doctor, with Blaine, makes for the TARDIS. Rose does the same thing, abandoning Mickey in the chaos. On approach to the TARDIS, the Doctor witnesses the ship opening the Rift. Hurrying inside, the Doctor tries to help Jack disconnect the extrapolator from the engines but it has little effect. Rose bursts in while they are working and, before either of them can do anything, Blon tears the arm of her skin suit off and wraps her massive hand around her neck. She explains that the plan was, if she were to be found and arrested, the extrapolator would be confiscated by her captors who would likely have access to advanced technology, which would then be used to open the Rift, opening her window to escape. While Jack places the extrapolator at her feet, a panel on the TARDIS console opens and exposes Blon to a bright light that the Doctor reveals as the heart of the TARDIS. Blon gazes dreamily into it, letting her grip on Rose slip and allowing her to free herself. Soon, the light engulfs Blon and her empty skin suit drops to the control room floor. The Doctor promptly seals the panel up again and gets Jack and Rose to help him close the Rift again. When the connection is cut and the planet is safe, the travellers investigate Blaine's skin suit and pull out and a regressed Slitheen egg that used to be Blon. While the Doctor decides what to do with it, Rose hurries off to find Mickey. Returning to the spot where she left him, she asks around but finds no sign of him. Unbeknownst to her, Mickey watches her return from the shadows before silently sloping away. Rose returns to the TARDIS, which was fully refueled by opening the Rift. Deciding to leave Mickey and allow him a better chance to be happy without her, Rose relents and the Doctor sets the ship for Raxacoricofallapatorius where they'd leave the Blon egg in the hatchery for a second chance at life and the TARDIS dematerialises. Cast * Doctor Who - Christopher Eccleston * Rose Tyler - Billie Piper * Mr Cleaver - William Thomas * Margaret - Annette Badland * Captain Jack - John Barrowman * Mickey - Noel Clarke * Cathy - Mali Harries * Idris Hopper - Aled Pedrick * Slitheen - Alan Ruscoe Crew To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''Boom Town'' page on '''Doctor Who Website